265: Chapter 265 Deep Space Countdown, The Ghost of the Cold War Awakens

Wu Dong's hands froze above the keyboard, he swallowed hard, and he did not strike immediately.

"Boss, the original design caliber of the Deep Space Array only reached lunar orbit. To force it to the edge of the solar system, we need to use the particle generators of three Space-based Punisher satellites as relay stepping stones."

Wu Dong's voice trembled, and fine beads of sweat seeped from his forehead.

"This will burn through the satellites' energy redundancy, and the twelve sets of backup superconducting arrays on the master control machine will be completely scrapped due to overload."

"Burn it."

Lu Chen stood in front of the console, his tone cold and unyielding, leaving no room for negotiation.

Wu Dong bit his lip, smashed his hands onto the console, and his ten fingers tapped out afterimages.

"First space-based node cut in, the superconducting array is overloading, temperature alarm!"

Wu Dong shouted while staring at the secondary screen.

"Ignore the alarm, push the second node."

Lu Chen stared at the giant main screen that occupied half the wall in front of him.

In the master control room, only the roaring sound of cooling fans running crazily remained.

The coordinate scales on the screen jumped rapidly—Mars orbit, Jupiter orbit, Saturn orbit, until the Kuiper Belt on the outskirts of Pluto's orbit.

The image froze at that moment, and the screen background was a deep, dead silent space.

Wu Dong leaned back in his chair and let out a long breath.

"There is nothing."

Song Changming wiped the cold sweat from his forehead.

"I told you, where would there be any alien creatures..."

A piercing, highest-level air defense alarm suddenly rang out in the master control room hall.

On the dead silent deep space background of the main screen, a red dot suddenly burst out.

Immediately following were ten, one hundred, ten thousand.

The screen full of red light spots instantly illuminated everyone's faces in the master control room blood-red, and the signal source statistics in the upper right corner were rolling crazily.

One hundred thousand, two hundred thousand, three hundred thousand.

The number stuck firmly at three hundred thousand and four thousand two hundred.

Wu Dong's legs went soft, and he fell to the ground along with his chair. He scrambled toward the console, grabbing the edge to try and stand up, but his legs could not muster any strength.

"That alien fleet... Boss! Three hundred thousand alien warships!"

Wu Dong's voice cracked completely, and his eyes were bloodshot.

Old Zhou slumped on the ground, gasping for air. He reached into his pocket for his quick-acting heart pills, but his hands were shaking so much that he couldn't even unscrew the bottle cap.

A heavy breathing sound came from Da Biao in the communication channel.

"Boss, can a blade cut a physical gap in those things in the sky?"

Da Biao's voice carried a rare, obvious hesitation.

"Da Biao, stop talking nonsense! Zhang Qiang requests to take the entire Viper submarine fleet out of port, load up with high-dimensional nuclear torpedoes, and if nothing else, we'll go to space and physically collide with them!"

Zhang Qiang shouted in the channel.

Wei Jianguo stood in front of the screen without speaking, staring tightly at that sea of red, the muscles at the corner of his eyes twitching violently.

He suddenly turned around, kicked away the still-trembling Wu Dong, and slammed his hands onto the spot Wu Dong had just vacated.

The keyboard was struck with a deafening sound.

Rows of complex spectral analysis bands and heat source feedback maps were dragged directly to the center of the main screen by him.

"To hell with the aliens!"

Wei Jianguo's eyes were bloodshot, and he pointed at the spectral graph on the screen, cursing loudly.

"Old Wei, have you lost your mind! Three hundred thousand high-energy reactors hanging over our heads, and you're telling me these aren't aliens?"

Wu Dong shouted from the ground.

"Open your own dog eyes and look at the material analysis!"

Wei Jianguo grabbed Wu Dong by the collar and forcibly dragged him to the front of the screen.

"Look at this row of basic spectral data!"

Wu Dong was stunned instantly.

Wei Jianguo pointed forcefully at the various data parameters on the screen.

"High titanium alloy! A mixture of outdated third-generation aerospace steel! Look at their heat source characteristics again; it's just basic enriched uranium decay reaction! This doesn't even reach the technical threshold for controllable nuclear fusion!"

Song Changming held onto the corner of the table to steady himself, staring at that row of data and confirming repeatedly.

"The outer shell has no energy deflection shield, no dark matter characteristics whatsoever; this is just a super giant cast-iron assembly with a fission nuclear warhead stuffed inside."

Song Changming's voice became somewhat dry.

Wei Jianguo pushed Wu Dong aside and turned to look at Lu Chen.

"Boss, this is Earthling stuff, and it's an old stockpile of weapons that's decades behind."

Wu Dong crawled back into his swivel chair and quickly pulled up the low-level scrap code he had previously intercepted and obtained from the First Elder.

The two sets of data began the cross-comparison process.

The underlying logic code was forcibly cracked line by line, and all verification passwords were determined to be correct.

Wu Dong's facial muscles were tight, his breathing became exceptionally heavy, and his face was deathly pale.

"Boss, it's been decrypted."

Wu Dong swallowed, his eyes fixed on the data panel, not daring to move even half an inch.

"This is the ultimate armed trump card that Freemasons sent into space in secret during the peak of the Cold War, exhausting the entire foundation of the Western world over hundreds of years. Code-named the Skynet-class Mechanical Nuclear Arsenal."

Lu Chen walked to the console, his gaze fixed on those three hundred thousand red light spots.

Wu Dong continued to report the information.

"There are no living people inside those three hundred thousand signal sources, nor are there any high-dimensional artificial intelligence consciousnesses; they are merely mechanical weapon carriers that follow the most basic physical judgment logic."

"The dead hand system at the New Atlantis in Antarctica is indeed bound to all ground-based nuclear power plants and railguns, but that dead hand system itself also plays another core role in the entire network logic."

Wu Dong took a deep breath.

"It is the underlying signal suppressor for this mechanical nuclear arsenal in the sky."

"Our physical excision operation under Antarctica just now directly severed the causal judgment logic of the dead hand system and deleted the operating code of the highest launch host, which is equivalent to cutting off the physical power connection of the suppressor."

"The nuclear arsenal in space cannot receive the suppression signal transmitted from the ground, so the system's underlying judgment logic directly confirms that Earth's leadership has been wiped out and the global surface has been completely occupied by unknown external forces."

Wei Jianguo took over the conversation from the side.

"So, the internal sleep programs of these three hundred thousand nuclear warheads strapped with thrusters have been automatically awakened and entered launch status."

Old Zhou stopped reaching for his medicine bottle, his whole body freezing in place.

"Old Wu, report their orbital parameters and propulsion descent speeds to me immediately."

Old Zhou pulled over a spare data entry keyboard.

Wu Dong read out a very long string of spatial parameter data from the screen.

Old Zhou operated his fingers rapidly, mobilizing the core supercomputing modules in the base to calculate the orbital impact points.

Five seconds later, Old Zhou slumped his hands down from the operation.

"How much longer until they land?"

Lu Chen asked.

"Two years."

Old Zhou's voice was very weak, and his hands were pressing tightly against the edge of the keyboard without letting go.

"In two years, these three hundred thousand super-yield nuclear bombs will pierce directly through Earth's atmosphere and carry out an indiscriminate saturation nuclear strike to scour the surface. The entire Earth's surface structures and ecosystems will be completely erased. Even if we hide on the Aerospace Carrier, we will have our external Magnetofluid Shield destroyed by this level of shockwave."

The master control room fell into an abnormally quiet state.

Da Biao and Zhang Qiang also did not make any sound in the communication channel.

Conventional anti-aircraft missiles are completely useless against this magnitude, and no matter how powerful the Space-based Punisher satellites are, they cannot simultaneously shred these three hundred thousand falling high-density metal components in space.

This is a completely unsolvable dead-end program setting.

This is the ultimate mutually assured destruction trump card plan left by Freemasons for all of humanity.

Lu Chen quietly watched that patch of red light spots on the big screen.

Those countdown numbers representing destruction were changing silently.

He suddenly let out a laugh, the sound appearing extremely discordant in the quiet environment of the master control room.

Lu Chen pulled out the boss chair in front of him and sat down comfortably. He reached out to touch his jacket pocket; the pack of double happiness he had earlier was completely finished, not a single one left.

"Go to my office desk drawer and get a new pack."

Lu Chen pointed at Old Zhou on the side.

Old Zhou stood up blankly, pulled open the wooden drawer, took out a brand new pack of double happiness, and handed it directly to Lu Chen.

Lu Chen tore open the outer plastic packaging with his bare hands, pulled out one, and stuck it directly in his mouth. With a crisp click as he pressed the plastic lighter, he opened his mouth and took a deep drag.

"Three hundred thousand nuclear warheads falling down all together, this spectacle is certainly something to behold."

Lu Chen tilted his head back and exhaled white smoke.

"Um, Boss, should we prepare our wills at this time, or should we immediately have Old Wei push the dosage of the genetic agent to the limit threshold to see if the Death Squad Soldiers can withstand the nuclear radiation shock with their physical bodies?"

Wu Dong asked, covered in sweat.

"Withstand what damn radiation?"

Lu Chen held the cigarette butt, his tone carrying extreme contempt and disdain.

"That pile of scrap material assemblies built by the ancestors in the sky, do they deserve to have me forfeit my life right here?"

Wei Jianguo suddenly raised his head from the screen.

"The Boss has a way to intercept? These are three hundred thousand falling physical metal targets!"

"Active interception? Too much trouble."

Lu Chen tapped the cigarette ash on the table with his finger.

Old Zhou cautiously stepped forward two steps.

"What is the Boss's intended response?"

Lu Chen reached out his left hand and pointed at the radar screen in front of him.

"Three hundred thousand waste thruster components falling down at the same time—relying on this current half-finished Aerospace Carrier that hasn't even had its superstructure built yet will definitely not withstand the shockwave. We need to build a global-coverage high-dimensional energy shield base system in advance to perform all-round physical isolation directly in mid-air."

Song Changming was completely anxious, pacing around in circles, at a loss.

"Boss, build a global shield base capable of blocking a surface-scouring level nuclear strike? Just the special steel and pressure-resistant coating materials needed for the initial phase would instantly empty all of the country's existing heavy industrial capacity, not to mention the need for millions of pieces of heavy engineering machinery and tens of millions of skilled industrial workers. Even if we raided the entire nest of that Jiangnan General Chamber of Commerce crowd, we would absolutely not be able to gather this scale!"

Lu Chen looked straight at the screen, his eyes revealing an undisguised, fanatical possessiveness.

"Our own capacity is indeed not enough, but there are people in the country whose resources can make up the number."

Lu Chen leaned back in his chair, his left knuckles rhythmically tapping the wooden tabletop.

"These past two days, those old aristocratic families and provincial financial clique representatives in the country, using the ready-made excuse of external environmental blockades, have been everywhere cutting off our raw materials and basic capital chains on the commercial front. Those state-owned old military factories and abandoned steel mill warehouses—they can't turn a profit with them in their own hands, yet they insist on clutching them and not letting us go in and touch them."

"I was just worrying about not finding a legitimate and suitable reason; taking advantage of this crisis, it's just right to be able to take over the entire massive industrial capacity of China in one go, compliantly, for integrated coordination."

Old Zhou's eyes widened suddenly; he immediately understood the deeper intention in Lu Chen's words.

In the face of this doomsday crisis capable of destroying the global ecosystem, all the conventional business rules and political maneuvering methods that those wealthy families and financial cliques once followed are facing a situation of complete invalidation.

Lu Chen is turning this destructive crisis descending upon their heads directly into his ultimate commercial warfare strategy to forcibly integrate all domestic resources.

At this time, whoever dares to stand up and block him is the absolute sinner dragging all of humanity to their graves.

"Old Wu."

Lu Chen stood up straight, holding his cigarette.

"Here, um, I'm here!"

Wu Dong answered the command loudly, feeling his weak legs gradually regaining some strength.

"Split this radar panoramic signal in front of us, along with the two-year countdown schedule next to it, into two separate data channels for me."

Lu Chen strode to the very front of the screen, his gaze fixed on those moving red dots.

"For the first channel, encrypt and package the data and send it directly to the internal terminals of The Pentagon and the joint command of those fourteen nations. Attach a sentence at the bottom of the file: tell those foreigners who just signed the convention agreement that either they load all of their country's top scientific research equipment and materials, along with all advanced blueprints and high-dimensional metal ore resources, onto ships and deliver them to Jiangcheng Port on time within a three-day deadline, or everyone will be forcibly physically evaporated together in this saturation strike two years from now."

Wu Dong's ten fingers tapped rapidly on the keyboard in front of him.

"The file is currently in the process of being packaged and sent!"

"Establish the second channel."

Lu Chen turned his head to look at the red dedicated telephone on the edge of the console area.

"Connect me directly to the office where the Old Chief in Beijing is located, and project the communication image onto the holographic screen on his wall simultaneously."

Lu Chen reached out to adjust the collar of his black jacket.

"After connecting, tell the Old Chief that I, Lu Chen, am going to use these three hundred thousand high-altitude falling objects in the sky as a bargaining chip to make an unprecedented massive resource deal with Beijing."